Backed by Western and Eastern powers, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded parts of Iran in the southwest on September 22, 1980, initiating the 8-year Imposed War on a country that had witnessed a democratic Islamic revolution a year earlier on February 1979. The Iranians call the war an imposed one because they never wanted it, and it was imposed on them by the aggressor, who never imagined he would receive stiff resistance.
The Saddam regime’s war on Iran lasted eight years. Soon after their country was invaded, the Iranians revolted against the invaders to expel them from their occupied soil. The launched what they called the holy or Sacred Defense against the aggressors.
Since the beginning of the war, Iran wanted Iraq to be officially declared as the initiator of the war. However, neither the Iraqi Ba’athist regime nor any of the major powers were willing to officially declare that the Saddam regime initiated the war against Iran.
Influenced by big powers, who armed the Saddam regime to the teeth, the United Nations Security Council refused to adopt an impartial stance in that regard during the eight years of war.
When Saddam tore up the 1975 Algiers Agreement in front of cameras and then started the war, the Security Council refused to say who started the war and which side violated the principle of Non-Use of Force.
The Iraqi Ba’athist regime used to refer to border skirmishes that preceded the invasion as its pretext for starting the war. The regime claimed that it took action after a long history of border disputes. But the reality was that, being illusioned by the political instability and the fast pace of developments in the post-revolution Iran, Saddam couldn’t wait to tear up the Algiers agreement. He might also have been pushed by hostile Western states that were angered by the victory of the Islamic Revolution.
Instead of the UN Security Council, it was UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar who declared Iraq as the aggressor and the initiator of the war in his report to the UN body in December 1991.
This action of the UN Secretary General in officially declaring Iraq as the initiator of war endorsed Iran’s right to self-defense.
The Iraqi dictator’s likely goal was to annex some parts of the oil-rich Khuzestan, which has a sizeable ethnic Arab population.
To mark the Sacred Defense Week and the 45th anniversary of the onset of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, Iranian armed forces usually hold parades each year. Various section of the Iranian military including Iranian Navy, Air Force, Army Ground Force, Airborne division, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Police take part in the nationwide parades.
